Fair.
And the link I threw out there was more to give folks like Marlowe the kind of flavor the rigor in which "facts" are treated in the Mathematics and Physics community. (It was a nice coincidence that he brought up Newton and Einstein, no?) It was not meant as a definition but more as an example...
Sorry, I blew the links... More intellectual honest? ;-)
For what it's worth, I generally sit these things out because they are futile semantic exercises. The problem here is that the type of "logic" being used by Marlowe is in fact the kind of thinking that brought us nuclear weapons and power plants, long before we really understood the risks or philosophical implications. It also now presents us with cloning (again, perhaps innocuous, but capable of designs on master races), the repercussions of 100 plus years of burning fossil fuels and the effect it might be having on the environment.
I do not doubt that we are clever animals, I just fear that sometimes we don't anticipate consequences very well. In essence, I have nothing against Marlowe except for what his type of thinking represents. A brain without a consciences. I'm not paralyzed by doubts, but I sure as hell don't dismiss them either.
